There are many reasons for firing employees and People lose their jobs largely for common reasons. Two of the most common ones are capability and conduct. From an employer’s perspective, if you want to handle dismissals right, you can start by treating capability and conduct separately. You need to recognize the difference between warning someone for a capability matter and warning him for his conduct. If you fail to distinguish between the two, you are much more likely to run the risk of a successful unfair dismissal application. Some organisations have separate disciplinary procedures for dealing with capability and conduct, but this is a matter of choice for the individual organisation.

This means that if your employee already has a warning for misconduct, and then demonstrates a lack of capability, you should issue him with a first warning for the capability matter, quite separate from the misconduct.

This infographic by tribehr covers the 13 most common reasons for getting written up or fired. Some of them are obvious, like ‘being drunk at work’ and ‘complaining about your boss or company on Facebook or Twitter.’ I mean, realllly? Others aren’t quite so obvious, like ‘unauthorized surfing of the Internet, or breach of company email policy.’ There is not a standard rule about what is okay and what is not okay when it comes to Internet use. It’s important to understand your company’s policy so you don’t accidentally make a misstep in this area.

The section at the bottom of this infographic which covers the top 10 reasons why bad employees don’t get fired from jobs is also interesting. There is so much office politics these days.